Abstract

Food sovereignty is understood as the right to determine food systems, and the ability to exercise this right requires the capacity to obtain, produce, and distribute culturally relevant foods. In the Standing Rock Nation of the northern Great Plains, efforts to reclaim food sovereignty include projects to increase the availability of gathered and gardened plants that are necessary components of traditional foods. Toward this objective, a voucher-based food assistance program administered by the Standing Rock Tribe is helping elders obtain culturally meaningful foods while contributing to the growth of farmers' markets within the reservation. As program enrollment and market attendance increase, organizers are considering the spatial arrangement of food system components and its influence on accessibility and participation. Our GIS spatial analysis of voucher issuance and redemption patterns reveals that the minimum cost-distance to market explains 33% of variance in voucher redemption. In order to improve program equity and efficiency, cost-distance models are used to identify potential additional market locations that would reduce the effort associated with trips to market and thus encourage participation. These analyses and possible spatial solutions contribute a powerful tool to improve food-system planning and to enhance the food sovereignty of indigenous communities in rural areas.

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FEATURED JAFSCD SHAREHOLDER

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Center for Regional Food Studies at the University of Arizona

The mission of the Center for Regional Food Studies at the University of Arizona is to integrate social, behavioral, and life sciences into interdisciplinary studies and community dialogue regarding change in regional food systems. We involve students and faculty in the design, implementation, and evaluation of pilot interventions and participatory community-based research in the Arizona-Sonora borderlands foodshed surrounding Tucson, a UNESCO-designated City of Gastronomy, in a manner that can be replicated, scaled up, and applied to other regions globally.

2019 Shareholder Commentary:Cultivating a Network of Citizen-Scientists to Track Change in the Sonora-Arizona Foodshed (forthcoming)

Example of Programming:

Reimagining Community Cultural Identity, Monday, April 1, 2019

Public Lecture by Carlton Turner, Lead Artist/Director of Mississippi Center for Cultural Production (Sipp Culture)

In this talk, Carlton Turner will use the work of Sipp Culture as a framework for how rural communities are grappling with reimagining their cultural identity in the wake of systems consolidation (in educational, medical, and food systems) and expansion of the digital divide across race and class lines.

Carlton Turner works across the country as a performing artist, arts advocate, policy shaper, lecturer, consultant, and facilitator. He is the founder of the Mississippi Center for Cultural Production (Sipp Culture), which uses arts and agriculture to support rural community, cultural, and economic development in his hometown of Utica, Mississippi.

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Why are we a shareholder of JAFSCD? It’s simple. The Center for Environmental Farming Systems and NC State Extension share the same goals as JAFSCD in promoting research-based strategies that simultaneously minimize food insecurity and farm loss and maximize community resilience.

—Dr. Nancy Creamer, Director, Center for Environmental Farming Systems, North Carolina State University

The Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development is published by the Thomas A. Lyson Center for Civic Agriculture and Food Systems, a project of the Center for Transformative Action (a nonprofit affiliate of Cornell University). JAFSCD is published with the support of these shareholding partners: